Livingston Christian Schools’ day in U.S. District Court has been scheduled for 10 a.m. Aug. 31.

Livingston Christian Schools sued Genoa Township after its Board of Trustees denied a special land use permit that would have allowed the private Christian School to move into the Brighton Church of the Nazarene, located just west of Brighton City on Brighton Road.

The school’s attorney Roger L. Myers filed an emergency motion for a preliminary injunction against the township.

It would stop the township from enforcing its denial or “interfering with Livingston Christian Schools’ occupancy of the property at issue for its school operations,” according to court documents.

Myers said the township’s response to the motion must be filed no later than Aug. 19.

The federal suit alleges the township violated the school’s rights under the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.

Judge George Caram Steeh, of the U.S. District Court Eastern District of Michigan-Southern Division, has been assigned to the case.

The judge is to consider if the township should be prohibited “from substantially burdening Livingston Christian Schools’ religious exercise through its denial” of the special use permit, “when the denial is not based on any compelling governmental interests and the Township did not consider any conditions that might impose a lesser-restrictive means of protecting its purported interests,” according to the emergency motion.

Another school, Light of the World Academy, was also impacted by Genoa Township’s decision. The school planned to move into the old St. Marys school building in Pinckney, where Livingston Christian Schools had been located in the past. It is to be a Montessori charter school this fall.

The township’s denial of the Brighton Church of the Nazarene’s application for the permit put both schools in limbo.

“The timing of this denial is perilous because school is scheduled to start on Sept. 8, 2015 for both Livingston Christian Schools and Light of the World Academy. The administrators of these schools, and the parents of children currently enrolled, are frantically struggling to make contingency arrangements while the fate of the schools is stuck in limbo,” the emergency motion states.

Contact Livingston Daily county and townships reporter Jennifer Eberbach at 517-548-7148 or at jeberbach@livingstondaily.com. Follow her on Twitter @JenTheWriter.